This is an attempt to bring some
clarification to all of the unproven and misleading
theories on the personhood of Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. Please
read
and prayerfully consider what is written herein and approach it with an open
mind.
The scriptures used throughout are from the NASB, but please feel free to look
them up using any version you like. I pray that God will help you to truly KNOW
the Messiah, the Son of God.

This paper asks the question shouldn’t we know our Savior - the One who redeemed
us unto
eternal life and shed His blood for us? But how can we know Him if we have the
wrong perception of who
or what He actually is? How can we be like Him as we’re commanded, if we think
He’s something He’s
not? In order to know Christ we must first lay the groundwork of knowing who or
what God is.
One may ask “Can we truly know God? God is a mystery and trying to know him and
define him
is putting him in a box. Here is what the Bible says about knowing God:

Jer. 9:24, but let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows
Me, that I am Yahweh who
exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in
these things," declares Yahweh.
John 1:18, No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the
Father, he has made him
known.

The NASB says “explained him” and the NKJV and the KJV both say “declared him”.
John 4:22, "You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for
salvation is from the Jews."
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ whom You have
sent."

Col 2:2, "that their hearts may be comforted, being united in love, and to all
riches of the full assurance of the
understanding, to the full knowledge of the secret of the God and Father, and of
the Christ."

It sure seems like God wants us to know him. Does this mean we
understand how He made the universe, how
He’s always existed, or that we’re trying to put Him in a box? Of course not,
but it does mean we can know who and what
He is in order to worship and serve Him better.

I will attempt to explain the Biblical position on the relationship between God
and His Christ (Unitarian). This
paper comes in two parts; the second part deals with verses that Trinitarian
sometimes use to support their position. This
paper will only present the Unitarian position without addressing those verses.
You may choose to read either paper first.

Here is a basic layout for this paper:
1. How many Gods or Persons within God?
2. Is Jesus co-equal with the Father and therefore eternal?
3. Was Jesus a pre-existent being (i.e. an angel)?
4. Was He a Man?
5. Does Jesus have a God?
6. Why a Man?
7. Other Considerations
8. Conclusion

1. How Many Gods or Persons within God?
Let’s see what the Old Testament says:
Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
Isaiah 43:10, Before Me there was no God formed, And there will be none after
Me.
Isaiah 44:6, …there is no God besides Me.
Isaiah 45:5, "I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no God…
Isaiah 46:9, For I am God, and there is no other; {I am} God, and there is no
one like Me,
Let’s see what the New Testament says:
Mark 10:18, And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good
except God
alone."
Mark 12:29, Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD OUR GOD
IS
ONE LORD."
John 5:44, "How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and you
do not seek
the glory that is from the {one and} only God?"
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ
whom You have sent."
1 Corinthians 8:6, yet for us there is {but} one God, the Father, from whom are
all things and
we {exist} for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we
{exist} through
Him."
1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, {and} one mediator also between God and
men, {the} man
Christ Jesus."

The Jews of Jesus time, and apparently Jesus and Paul (from the scriptures
above), thought God
was one being; it was the bedrock of their faith. As Anthony Buzzard states in
his book 1The Doctrine of
the Trinity – Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound, “Not once do we find Jesus
criticizing his fellow
countrymen for holding an inadequate understanding of the number of persons in
the Godhead.” If there
is only one God (and according to the above mentioned scriptures there is), then
who is this one God? Is
it Jesus? Is it the Father? Is it some Trinitarian or Binitarian being? Does the
word “God” really mean
God Family?

Let’s see what the Old Testament says:
NOTE: we must remember that when the Old Testament uses LORD in all capital
letters in most of our
English translations, it is a place where the Tetragrammaton (YHVH or YHWH -
Yahweh) was used in the
original. As quoted earlier:
Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!"
Isaiah 45:5, "I am the LORD, and there is no other; Besides Me there is no
God…."
So YHVH (LORD) is the one true God. There are many, many examples from the Old
Testament,
but for the sake of space and time these two should suffice. They clearly say
that YHVH (LORD) is the
only God.

Let’s see what the New Testament says:
Mark 12:29, Jesus answered, "The foremost is, 'HEAR, O ISRAEL! THE LORD (YHVH)
OUR
GOD IS ONE LORD (YHVH)"
Since Jesus quotes Deut. 6:4 in Matthew it is clear that the one God in the OT –
YHVH - is the same one
God in the New Testament – the Father. As we have already quoted, Jesus said the
following, in John,
while praying to the Father:
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ
whom You have sent."
And Paul says:
1 Corinthians 8:6, "yet for us there is {but} one God, the Father, from whom are
all things and
we {exist} for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we
{exist} through
Him."

Just as Mark confirms the OT claim that YHVH is the one true God, John and 1
Corinthians
confirm that this one God is the Father. So the Father in the New Testament is
synonymous with YHVH
in the Old Testament. Both Testaments say that YHVH, or the Father, is the ONLY
God.
Some might say “I thought Jesus was God the Son”? No, the Bible says Jesus is
the Son of
God and the Son of Man (“God the Son” is a term invented by men and is not found
in the Bible). He is
the Son of Man because His mother was Mary (human, mankind), and He is the Son
of God because His
father was God. But what exactly is Jesus? He’s clearly not the one true God as
we’ve already seen:
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ
whom You have sent.

If He were another God (in the sense that John means it here) He would have to
be a false god,
because we have already seen that there is only ONE TRUE GOD. Granted, many
beings are called
god: Angels, OT judges, Moses, Jesus, Satan, etc, but not in the sense that John
means it in the above
passage. The word God (Elohim in the OT and Theos in the NT) can mean other
things besides the one
true God. Just because many beings are called god, does not make them the one
true God. Can Jesus
then somehow be co-equal with the Father (whom we know to be the one True God)
and therefore
eternal? Or could he have been a pre-existent being or an angel? Was He a true
flesh-and-blood man
just without a human father? These are all good questions that I will attempt to
answer in the remainder
of this paper.

2. Is Jesus co-equal with the Father and therefore eternal?
Was Christ co-equal with the Father? Most people would say he was subordinate to
the Father
while he was on earth simply because the evidence in scripture is overwhelming,
but while many would
say He was subordinate, a good portion of these would also add that “His human
side was subordinate –
not His God side”. Is this splitting of Christ’s nature into a “God” side and a
“human” side Biblical -
separating Jesus into two parts? This is called the Double-Nature of Christ or
the Hypostatic Union. Here
is an interesting scripture:

1 John 4:2, By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that
Jesus Christ has
come in the flesh is from God."

An ancient text for 1John 4:1-2 is reconstructed from Irenaeus (Ch. 16:8, ANF,
Vol. 1, fn. p. 443);
it gives a slightly different reading:
"Hereby know ye the spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth Jesus Christ
came in the flesh is of
God; and every spirit which separates Jesus Christ is not of God but is of
antichrist."

Socrates the historian says (VII, 32, p. 381) that this passage (from Irenaeus)
is the true reading
and that it became corrupted by those who wished to separate the humanity of
Jesus Christ from his
divinity. Is this separation Biblical? On the double-nature of Christ, Frederick
A. Farley, DD in his book

5. The Scripture Doctrine of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost says:
…in effect it charges our Lord with duplicity. When he declared on one occasion:
‘Of that day and
hour knoweth no man; no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son,
but the Father’
what more precise and significant words could he have used, to show that he laid
no claim to
omniscience, that attribute essential to Deity, without which no being could be
God? If there was
any one thing of which our Lord was ignorant, he could not be God. And how
should we have
understood him, had we been present—how did the Apostles, how did the multitude
who were
present, understand him at the time? They must have understood him as we do, to
have made a
positive, express declaration, that ‘of that day and hour’ he had no knowledge;
and therefore to
suppose that he made a mental reservation, as to his divine knowledge, while he
declared only
his human want of it, is to charge him with duplicity, with double-dealing, with
deceit.
But on this hypothesis, what mean all his declarations of dependence on God? ‘Of
mine own self
I can do nothing; as I hear I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not
mine own will, but
the will of the Father which hath sent me;’ just as he had before said; ‘The Son
can do nothing of
himself, but what he seeth the Father do.’ What mean his expressions of trust in
God? To
Pilate’s haughty menace he replied, ‘Thou couldest have no power at all against
me, except it
were given thee from above;’ and in that most solemn hour when he was drawing
his last breath
upon the cross, he said: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit!’ To whom
were these
words addressed? To whom was he accustomed to pray? To one part of his nature—to
himself—to a part of himself? What mockery all this seems!
…here the plainest becomes a riddle. When our Lord says, ‘My Father is greater
than I,’ he
meant only that his divine nature was greater than his human nature! But who can
prove that he
so meant? Neither he nor his disciples, give the slightest reason to suppose
that he or they
meant any thing but what their words obviously mean. Besides, we cannot tell
when to apply the
hypothesis. We are all in the dark; and the Scripture may be made to mean by it
the most
contradictory things. Whatever Christ said or did may thus be done away, and the
entire New
Testament become a mass of enigma.
Concerning the double-nature or hypostatic union J. S. Hyndman in his 6Lectures
on The Principles of
Unitarianism says:
To say therefore that Christ possesses both a divine and a human nature, is to
say that he
possesses both the qualities of God and the qualities of man; that the same mind
consequently is
both created and uncreated, both finite and infinite, both dependant and
independent, both
changeable, and unchangeable, both mortal and immortal, both susceptible of pain
and incapable
of it, both able to do all things and not able, both acquainted with all things
and not acquainted
with them.
Alas! That ever a system was formed which subverts the adorable attributes of
the Godhead,
while its professed object is to display them! – that the ingenuity of man ever
employed itself in
clouding the glory of infinite perfections, and with the view of magnifying them
has stamped
mutation on Jehovah’s being, and struck out limits to his presence!
Laying the double-nature theory aside for good, let’s see what the scriptures
say about His position while
on earth:
Matthew 20:23, …but to sit on My right and on {My} left, this is not Mine to
give, but it is for
those for whom it has been prepared by My Father."
Matthew 26:39,…"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not
as I will, but as
You will."
Matthew 26:53, "Or do you think that I cannot appeal to My Father, and He will
at once put at
My disposal more than twelve legions of angels?
Mark 10:18, And Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good
except God
alone.
Mark 13:32, "But of that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in
heaven, nor the Son,
but the Father {alone.}
Mark 15:34, Jesus cried out with a loud voice… "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU
FORSAKEN ME?"
John 4:34, Jesus *said to them, "My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me
and to
accomplish His work.
John 5:19, …"Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself,
unless {it is}
something He sees the Father doing…
John 5:20, "For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He
Himself is doing…
John 5:22, "For not even the Father judges anyone, but He has given all judgment
to the Son,
John 5:26, "For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the
Son also to have
life in Himself;
John 5:30, "I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My
judgment is just,
because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.
John 5:36, "But the testimony which I have is greater than {the testimony of}
John; for the works
which the Father has given Me to accomplish--the very works that I do--testify
about Me, that
the Father has sent Me.
John 7:16, So Jesus answered them and said, "My teaching is not Mine, but His
who sent
Me.
John 7:28, Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, "You both
know Me and
know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true,
whom you
do not know.
John 8:26, …but He who sent Me is true; and the things which I heard from Him,
these I speak
to the world."
John 8:28, …and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as
the Father
taught Me.
John 8:40, "But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the
truth, which I
heard from God...(notice he doesn’t say “which I heard from the Father” – but
“God)
John 8:54, Jesus answered, "If I glorify Myself, My glory is nothing; it is My
Father who
glorifies Me, of whom you say, 'He is our God';
John 10:35-36, "If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the
Scripture
cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into
the world,
'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?
John 12:49, "For I did not speak on My own initiative, but the Father Himself
who sent Me has
given Me a commandment {as to} what to say and what to speak.
John 14:10, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in
Me? The words that
I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me
does His works.
John 14:28, …If you loved Me, you would have rejoiced because I go to the
Father, for the
Father is greater than I.
John 17:3, "This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus
Christ whom You have sent.
John 18:11, …the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?"

That should be enough to convince any Truth Seeker that Christ was subordinate
to God at least
while He was on the earth. No hint of a “man side” and a “God side”. We
shouldn’t try and make
scripture fit our doctrine, but we should make our doctrine fit scripture. It is
interesting that the majority of
texts come from John – the one gospel that Trinitarians and others like to use
to prove Jesus is God. It’s
also interesting that Trinitarians say that the Trinity is three persons (in the
Godhead) with one nature, but
they say Jesus is one person with two natures - a human nature and a God nature
- 100% man and
100% God. So the Trinity is three persons with one nature, but Jesus is one
person with two natures!!
If Christ did have two natures (which is absurd), surely after his resurrection
and ascension his
human nature has been shed. Let us now look to see if Christ was subordinate to
the Father after His
resurrection and ascension. Let’s go to the scriptures:

1 Timothy 2:5, For there is one God, {and} one mediator also between God and
men, {the}
man Christ Jesus, - notice he’s still called a man after his resurrection and
ascension.
1 Corinthians 8:6, yet for us there is {but} one God, the Father, from whom are
all things and
we {exist} for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we
{exist} through
Him.
1 Corinthians 11:3, But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of
every man, and the
man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.
1 Corinthians 15:24,28, then {comes} the end, when He hands over the kingdom to
the God
and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. When all
things are
subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who
subjected all
things to Him, so that God may be all in all.
Revelation 1:1, "The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him…."

Thus far we have seen that there is only ONE TRUE GOD and that this one God is
YHVH of the
Old Testament and the Father of the New Testament. He was also the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. We have seen that Jesus was subordinate to this one God both while on
earth and after His
resurrection and ascension. If Jesus is not the ONE TRUE GOD then what is He? Is
He a man? Is He
an Angel or some other type of pre-existent being? Let us examine this last
question first.
3. Was Jesus a pre-existent being (i.e. an angel)?
Did Jesus pre-exist (can one exist before they exist)? If Christ was a
pre-existent being such as
an angel or something above the angels, yet he was not God, could he still be
eternal? Only God is
eternal. If he was born or created sometime before the creation of the earth
then why do we never hear
from him or about him in the Old Testament? Some would say that we do! They
would counter that He
was Michael the Archangel; others would say He was the Angel of YHVH. The
chances of this are so
remote that we will not consider them in too much depth. When the Apostles in
the New Testament go to
such great lengths to explain to us who Jesus is, why do they not say He was
Michael? Why do they not
say He was the Angel of YHVH? Michael is mentioned in the book of Revelation and
so is Jesus, but
there is no mention of them being the same person. In the beginning the Apostles
didn’t understand
everything Jesus was telling them, but by the time they wrote the New Testament
(which I’m sure most
reading this believe is inspired) they had been endowed by the Holy Spirit.
Suffice it to say that Hebrews
clearly tells us that Jesus did not appear in the Old Testament:

Heb 1:2, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed
the heir of all
things, through whom also he created the world.
The word “world” in Hebrews 1:2 is actually the word for age(s). The word
“through” in this same
scripture is the Greek word “dia” which according to Strong’s can carry the
meaning of “on account of” or
“by reason of”. Let’s read this scripture again with these meanings:
Heb 1:2, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed
the heir of all
things, on account of whom also he created the ages.
Did He pre-exist in God’s mind as the Word – Logos – Reason – Plan for
everything that would
happen? Yes! Did God foreknow Jesus in a very real way? Yes:
1 Peter 1:20, For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has
appeared in
these last times for the sake of you.
(Here’s what Strong’s says the definition of the word “foreknown” (proginosko)
is:
Lexicon Results for proginosko (Strong’s 4267), Greek for 4267
Pronunciation Guide: proginosko {prog-in-oce'-ko}; TDNT Reference Root Word
TDNT - 1:715,119 from 4253 and 1097. Part of Speech: v.; Outline of Biblical
Usage: to have knowledge before hand;
to foreknow those whom God elected to salvation; to predestinate. Authorized
Version (KJV) Translation Count Total: 5
AV - foreknow 2, foreordain 1, know 1, know before 1; 5)

How do you foreknow someone who has always existed? Did God foreknow us?

Romans 8:29, For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become}
conformed to the
image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
Eph. 1:4, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we
would be
holy and blameless before Him. In love
2 Tim. 1:9, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to
our works,
but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus
from all
eternity, Yes! God did foreknow us, but we did not pre-exist except in His heart
and mind. Did the Apostle John
pre-exist?
John 1:6, There came a man sent from God, whose name was John.
We know the Apostle John did not pre-exist, but when we see this same type of
wording (“sent
from God”) applied to Jesus, we somehow read pre-existence into it. We also
understand what the
Apostle Paul means in Romans 9:3 when he says, "For I could wish that I myself
were accursed, {separated} from Christ for the sake of my brethren,
my kinsmen according to the flesh."
Yet somehow when we read in Romans 9:5 "from whom is the Christ according to the
flesh"
we think it means he must have pre-existed. When the author of the Epistle to
the Hebrews says that we
are “partakers of flesh and blood” we understand what is meant, but when we read
in John that “the
word was made flesh” we read pre-existence into it. Why do we use this double
standard?
4. Was Jesus a Man?
Let’s see what the Old Testament says:
Deut. 18:15, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a Prophet like me from
your midst, from
your brethren. Him you shall hear,
Numbers 24:17-19 "I see Him, but not now; I behold Him, but not near; A Star
shall come out of Jacob;
A Scepter shall rise out of Israel, And batter the brow of Moab, And destroy all
the sons of *tumult.
v.18 "And Edom shall be a possession; Seir also, his enemies, shall be a
possession, While Israel does valiantly.
v.19 Out of Jacob One shall have dominion, And destroy the remains of the city."

II Samuel 7:12-13 "When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers,
I will set up your seed after you,
who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He shall
build a house for My name, and I
will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
Isaiah 11:1-3, There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, And a Branch
shall grow out of his roots.
v.2 The Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon Him, The Spirit of wisdom and
understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might, The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the
LORD.
v.3 His delight is in the fear of the LORD,

Isaiah 49:1-8, "...The LORD hath called me [Jesus] from the womb; from the
bowels of my
mother [Mary] hath he made mention of my name [Matthew 1:20-21, Luke
1:28-33]....in the
shadow of his hand hath he hid me...And now, saith the LORD that formed me from
the womb
to be his servant... to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth
[referring to
Christ Jesus]...have I [God] heard thee...have I [God] helped thee: and I [God]
will preserve thee
[Jesus, the Christ], and give thee for a covenant [New Testament]..."
Jer. 23:5, "Behold, the days are coming," says the LORD,
"That I will raise to David a Branch of righteousness; A King shall reign and
prosper, And execute judgment and righteousness in the earth.

The following verse in Daniel is a prophecy of the ascension of Jesus to God to
receive his dominion and glory
(future at the time of Daniel). Daniel is seeing this vision from a Heavenly
point of view; hence the “coming with the
clouds of heaven” is actually a vision of Jesus’ coming to the Father after His
resurrection, not to the earth in our future.
He is called the Son of Man in this verse. If Daniel was seeing the pre-existent
Jesus he would have been the Son of
God, since he had not yet been born as a man (according to the pre-existent
theory).

Daniel 7:13-14 "I was watching in the night visions, And behold, One like the
Son of Man,
Coming with the clouds of heaven! He came to the Ancient of Days, And they
brought Him near before Him.
v. 14 Then to Him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, That all peoples,
nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion, Which shall not pass away, And His
kingdom the one Which shall not be destroyed.

Zech. 6:12-13, Then speak to him, saying, 'Thus says the LORD of hosts, saying:
"Behold, the Man whose name
is the BRANCH! From His place He shall branch out, And He shall build the temple
of the LORD;
v.13 Yes, He shall build the temple of the LORD. He shall bear the glory, And
shall sit and rule on His throne;
So He shall be a priest on His throne, And the counsel of peace shall be between
them both."

There are many more Messianic prophecies but it is widely known that mainstream
Judaism never expected
anything other than a human Messiah. However, couldn’t the Jews have gotten it
wrong (as they often did in Jesus time)?
They may have gotten it wrong in their extra-biblical writings and musings, but
not in the inspired Word of God. Some
might say it was simply veiled in the Old Testament that the Messiah was
actually going to be God himself and this wasn’t
revealed until the New Testament; let’s take a look at the following passage in
the Old Testament:
Psalm 110:1, The LORD says to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand Until I make Your
enemies a footstool for Your
feet."

Let me again quote from Anthony Buzzard’s book 1The Doctrine of the Trinity –
Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound.
It has been argued by some that this verse should be rendered ‘God said to my
God…’ They insist that
David knew of a duality in the Godhead and under inspiration declared the
eternal Sonship and Deity of the one
who was to become the man Jesus.

Such a theory involves a misuse of the Hebrew language which can easily be
cleared up. The two words
for ‘lord’ in the sentence ‘the LORD said to my lord’ are significantly
different. The first ‘LORD’ is Yahweh… [and]
refers to God, the Father, the One God of Israel (as it does on some 6700
occasions). The second word for ‘lord’
(here, ‘my lord’) is adoni, meaning according to all standard Hebrew lexicons,
‘lord,’ ‘master,’ or ‘owner,’ and it
refers here, by way of prediction, to the Messiah. If David had expected the
Messiah to be God, the word used
would not have been adoni, but adonai, a term used exclusively for the One God.

Psalm 110:1 provides a major key to understanding who Jesus is. The Hebrew Bible
carefully
distinguishes the divine title adonai, the Supreme Lord, from adoni, the form of
address appropriate to human and
angelic superiors. Adoni, ‘my lord,’ ‘my master’ on no occasion refers to the
deity. Adonai, on the other hand, is
the special form of adon, Lord, reserved for address to the One God only.

A reader of the Hebrew Bible is schooled to recognize the vital distinction
between God and man. There
is an enormous difference between adoni, ‘my master,’ and adonai, the Supreme
God. No less than 195 times in
the Hebrew canon adoni marks the person addressed as the recipient of honor but
never as the Supreme God.
This important fact tells us that the Hebrew Scriptures expected the Messiah to
be not God, but the human
descendant of David, whom David properly recognized would also be his lord.

It is unusual for scholarly writing actually to misstate the facts about a word
appearing in the Hebrew or
Greek text. Astonishingly, however, a remarkable error crept into statements on
high authority regarding the
identity of the Messiah in this crucial Christological passage in Psalm 110:1.

Notice now the evidence of widespread confusion in the treatment of this Psalm.
The status of Jesus as
the human adoni has proved to be an embarrassment to later ‘orthodoxy.’ A Roman
Catholic writer, in an effort to
support his traditional doctrine of the eternal Son, states in Psalm 110:1
‘Yahweh said to Adonai: Sit thou at my right hand.’ This passage is cited by
Christ to prove that he is Adonai, seated at the right hand of Yahweh (Matt.
22:44). But Adonai ‘my master,’ as a
proper name is used exclusively of the Deity, either alone or in such a phrase
as Yahweh Adonai. It is
clear, then that in this lyric Yahweh addresses the Christ as a different Person
and yet identical in
Godhead.

The information is incorrect. The second lord of the Hebrew text is specifically
not adonai but adoni. The
latter is never a divine title. The former always designates the Deity. The
whole Trinitarian argument from this
Psalm fails because the facts of the language are wrongly reported.
That pretty much says it all. The Old Testament seems pretty clear that the
Messiah who was to come was going to be a
true, flesh-and-blood, man.

Let’s see what the New Testament says:
Can God be tempted? Not according to James:
James 1:13, "God cannot be tempted with evil"
Jesus was tempted…
Luke 4:1-2, "And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, and
was led by the
Spirit into the wilderness, Being forty days tempted of the devil."
Luke 22:28, "Ye are they which have continued with me in my temptations."
Hebrews 2:18, "For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted..."
Hebrews 4:15, "...but was in all points tempted like as we are..."
If his temptations weren’t real then he wasn’t “in all points tempted like as we
are”. If there was
no real possibility of Jesus giving in to these temptations, then they weren’t
really temptations. Do any
other New Testament scriptures insinuate he was a man?
John 8:40, "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth,
which I have heard of God..."
The rest of these verses are the Apostles speaking after Jesus’ resurrection.
Acts 2:22-24, 22 "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man
attested by God to
you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as
you
yourselves also know-- 23 Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and
foreknowledge of
God, you *have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 whom
God raised
up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should
be held by it.
Acts 2:36, "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has
made this Jesus, whom you
crucified, both Lord and Christ."
Acts 3:22, "For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your
God raise up
unto you of your brethren..."
Acts 13:23, "Of this man's seed (David's) hath God according to his promise
raised unto Israel a
Saviour, Jesus:"
Romans 5:19, "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the
obedience of one (one man, Jesus Christ, verse 15) shall many be made
righteous."
1 Corinthians 15:21-23, "For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of
the dead. For as in Adam (a man) all die, even so in Christ (a man) shall all be
made alive. But
every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward..."
1 Timothy 2:5, "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the
man Christ
Jesus;"
The above verse in 1 Timothy should be clear enough. Notice it does not say “one
mediator
between ‘the Father’ and men”, but “between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”.
If Jesus were God,
this scripture wouldn’t make any sense.
Hebrews 1:4, having become so much better than the angels, as He has by
inheritance
obtained a more excellent name than they.
Hebrews 1:11-12, For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified
are all of one, for which
reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, 12 saying: "I will declare Your
name to My brethren; In the midst
of the assembly I will sing praise to You."*
Hebrews 5:7-9, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement
cries and tears to Him who
was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear, 8
though He was a Son, yet He
learned obedience by the things which He suffered. 9 And having been perfected,
He became the author of
eternal salvation to all who obey Him,
Hebrews 7:14, For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, a tribe
with reference to which
Moses spoke nothing concerning priests.
Rev. 5:5, and one of the elders *said to me, "Stop weeping; behold, the Lion
that is from the tribe of Judah, the
Root of David, has overcome so as to open the book and its seven seals."

For Christ to truly come from the tribe of Judah, he had to be of Mary’s egg.
Not an angel put in her womb and
not God himself entering Mary’s womb, but an actual baby conceived in her womb
from her egg (not from Joseph, but
from God – virgin birth). The KJV uses the words “sprang out of Juda” in Hebrews
7:14. The Greek word is “anatello”
and means “rise – to cause to rise – of the earth bringing forth plants – etc.”

Luke records the conversation between the Angel and Mary in this way:
Luke 1:35, The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon
you, and the power of the Most
High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the
Son of God.
The Greek word here translated as “for that reason” (therefore in the KJV) is
dio, and it means “wherefore; on
account of”. The reason Jesus would be called the Son of God was because the
Power of the Most High God was going
to overshadow Mary and she would conceive, and for that reason, or on account of
this, He would be called the Son
of God.

The Old Testament type was “a lamb from among the flock”; one without spot or
blemish.
Jesus had to be one of us, not God masquerading as a man who was not really
“tempted in every way as
we are” and who could not really die; he also could not be some Angel or
pre-existent being. As 2J.A.
Baker states: “It simply is not possible at one and the same time to share the
common lot of humanity
and to be aware of oneself as one who has existed from everlasting with God”.
And as stated in 3 “One
God and One Lord – Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the Christian Faith”:
…if Jesus were aware of being “God” in some way, or could remember his former
state of glory in
heaven, then his experience of earthly life would be very different from ours.
Consequently, our
ability to identify with both his overcoming temptation and leaving us a
righteous path to follow is
seriously compromised. We are then essentially left without a “mediator”, but
are being asked to
be like God Himself, instead of developing absolute trust in God, our heavenly
Father, as Jesus
did, and becoming like him as he said we could and should.

We have seen that Jesus was a man, a mediator between God and man; we are to be
like Christ – heirs with
Him; God is our Father and Christ is our Brother:
Acts 3:22, "Moses said, 'THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME
FROM YOUR
BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you.
Romans 8:17, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with
Christ, if indeed we suffer with
{Him} so that we may also be glorified with {Him.}
Romans 8:29, For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined {to become}
conformed to the image of His
Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;
Hebrews 2:11-12, For both He who sanctifies and those who are sanctified are all
from one {Father;} for which
reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren, saying, "I WILL PROCLAIM YOUR
NAME TO MY BRETHREN,
IN THE MIDST OF THE CONGREGATION I WILL SING YOUR PRAISE."

This should have thoroughly proven that Christ was a man; not a half man, not
sort-of-a-man, not possessing a
man’s body, not God masquerading as a man, but a real flesh-and-blood man. There
is nothing to make us think He is
one-third of a triune being. He is not co-equal and co-eternal with the Father.
He is the Son of Man and the Son of God –
He is our Lord and Savior.
1 Corinthians 8:6, "But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all
things, and we in him; and one
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him."
Phil. 2:11, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the
glory of God the Father.

5. Did/Does Jesus have a God?
Let’s see what the scriptures say:
Matt 27:46, About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying,
"ELI, ELI, LAMA
SABACHTHANI?" that is, "MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?" (also in
Mark 15:34)
John 17:3, This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ
whom You have sent.
John 20:17, Jesus *said to her, "Stop clinging to Me, for I have not yet
ascended to the Father;
but go to My brethren and say to them, 'I ascend to My Father and your Father,
and My God and
your God.' "
Some may say that Jesus made these comments in the flesh while on earth. Even
though this is
not a good argument – this splitting of Christ into two natures (as we have
seen), this argument certainly
doesn’t hold water for the remainder of these verses, which are after his Death,
Burial, and Resurrection.
Romans 15:6, so that with one accord you may with one voice glorify the God and
Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Cor 1:3, Blessed {be} the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father
of mercies
and God of all comfort,
2 Cor 11:31, The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed forever,
knows that I
am not lying.
Eph 1:17, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give
to you a spirit of
wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him.
1 Peter 1:3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
according to His
great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead,
Heb 1:9, "YOU HAVE LOVED RIGHTEOUSNESS AND HATED LAWLESSNESS; THEREFORE
GOD, YOUR GOD, HAS ANOINTED YOU WITH THE OIL OF GLADNESS ABOVE YOUR
COMPANIONS."
Rev 1:1, The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show to His
bond-servants,
the things which must soon take place; and He sent and communicated {it} by His
angel to His
bond-servant John,
Rev 1:5-6, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the
dead, and the ruler of
the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by His
blood-- and He
has made us {to be} a kingdom, priests to His God and Father--to Him {be} the
glory and the
dominion forever and ever. Amen.
Rev 3:12, 'He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God,
and he will not go
out from it anymore; and I will write on him the name of My God, and the name of
the city of My
God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down out of heaven from My God, and My new
name.
Many Trinitarians subconsciously read the word “Father” in place of God when
they see Jesus and God in
juxtaposition, because to them God is a trinity, so when they see the word “God”
in the verses just
mentioned – it must mean Father to them!

6. Why a Man?
As stated in 3“One God and One Lord – Reconsidering the Cornerstone of the
Christian Faith”:
Why did God need to fill this position of Redeemer? Because He had to “fire” the
original general
manager of His creation (Adam) for gross impropriety and malfeasance. When God
delegated
the oversight of Creation to a man with free will, He anticipated the
possibility of that man’s failure,
and formulated a plan to solve the problem. The plan was for another man to
rectify the
catastrophic situation. Why another man, when He had such poor success with the
first one?
Why did He not just march down here and take care of things Himself? Many
Christians believe
that is exactly what God did – that He became a man in order to redeem mankind.
There are a couple of problems with this. First of all when man sinned God
required that blood be shed
to pay for those sins.
Gen. 9:4-6, 4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5
Surely for your lifeblood
I will demand a reckoning; from the hand of every beast I will require it, and
from the hand of
man. From the hand of every man's brother I will require the life of man. 6
"Whoever sheds
man's blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made
man.
Blood had to be shed; without the shedding of blood there is no remission of
sins:
Hebrews 9:22, without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.
But God cannot shed blood; He is not flesh and blood.
Matt. 16:17, And Jesus said to him, "Blessed are you, Simon Barjona, because
flesh and blood
did not reveal {this} to you, but My Father who is in heaven.
Because blood is required, God set up the whole sacrificial system, but it was
only a shadow or type
pointing to the Messiah. This is the reason that the animal sacrifices in the
Old Testament did not truly
atone for sins.
Hebrews 10:4, For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could
take away sins.
Man sinned, so man’s blood is required. Again, God’s blood is not required – God
is not a man and He
cannot die.
Numbers 23:19, "God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He
should
repent.
By looking at Adam Christology we can see another reason Jesus had to be a true
man (another Adam). The first
Adam messed things up and the second Adam came to fix them.
1 Cor 15:45, So also it is written, "The first MAN, Adam, BECAME A LIVING SOUL."
The last Adam
{became} a life-giving spirit.
Romans 5:14-19, Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those
who had not sinned
according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of Him who
was to come. 15 But
the free gift is not like the offense. For if by the one man's offense many
died, much more the grace of
God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. 16
And the gift is not
like that which came through the one who sinned. For the judgment which came
from one offense
resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses
resulted in justification. 17 For
if by the one man's offense death reigned through the one, much more those who
receive abundance of
grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One [man],
Jesus Christ.)18
Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, resulting in
condemnation, even so
through one Man's righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in
justification of life. 19 For as by
one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man's obedience
many will be made
righteous.
1 Cor. 15:21-22, For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection
of the dead.
22 For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.
Do you see the pattern emerging here? Man sinned so man has to pay for those
sins, but because of the sin
nature, we have a propensity to sin. Therefore God, in his amazing foreknowledge
and grace, had a contingency plan
from the foundation of the world. He would have a man be born in the fullness of
time that does not have an earthly father
to pass along the sin nature. God’s Spirit would overshadow Mary and she would
conceive and give birth to the Messiah
who would pay for man’s sins.
The first Adam was called the Son of God because he was made by God; he was a
true man, made by God
Luke 3:38, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.
Therefore, the second Adam had to be a true man, made by God. God created man
(Adam) who had the
capability of sinning (human nature), but not a propensity toward it (sin
nature). He made him genetically perfect and
hoped he would be behaviorally perfect. Once he disobeyed and ate of the
forbidden fruit, sin nature entered the
picture. The birth of our Savior was from God impregnating Mary, creating
another genetically perfect man and hoping
he would be behaviorally perfect. God was responsible for the flawless genetics,
but since man is a free will being, he
could not be responsible for his behavior. Man must choose to obey or disobey.
The first Adam chose to disobey; the
second Adam was obedient in every way. We again quote from 3“One God and One
Lord – Reconsidering the
Cornerstone of the Christian Faith”:
In essence, God took a risk and trusted that the Last Adam would trust Him. This
is love in
action: taking a risk, giving second chances, demonstrating commitment to a
promise.
Remember this?
Hebrews 4:15, "...but was in all points tempted like as we are..."
Can we really say he was “tempted like as we are” if he existed from eternity
past, had a knowledge of this existence, and
knew he would return to being God himself? I quote 4J.A.T. Robinson:
The traditional supranaturalistic way of describing the Incarnation almost
inevitably suggests that Jesus was really
God Almighty walking about on earth, dressed up as a man. Jesus was not a man
born and bred – he was God
for a limited period taking part in a charade. He looked like a man, he talked
like a man, he felt like a man, but
underneath he was God dressed up – like Father Christmas…Indeed, the very word
“incarnation” (which, of
course is not a Biblical term) almost inevitably suggests it. It conjures up the
idea of a divine substance being
plunged in flesh and coated with it like a chocolate or silver plating…The
supranaturalist view of the Incarnation
can never really rid itself of the idea of the prince who appears in the guise
of a beggar. However genuinely
destitute the beggar may be, he is a prince; and that in the end is what
matters.
If it is a requirement that we believe in a Trinitarian God, a Binitarian God,
or a God Family; if it is a requirement
that we believe Jesus was anything other than the Son of God; why didn’t Peter
mention it when he preached this sermon
to JEWS (who were extremely Monotheistic and had no conception of the Trinity)
in Acts chapter 2 right after he had
received the promised Holy Spirit (which should have led him into all truth)?
Acts 2:22-42, "Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a Man
attested by God to you by
miracles, wonders, and signs which God did through Him in your midst, as you
yourselves also know-- 23
Him, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you
*have taken by lawless
hands, have crucified, and put to death; 24 whom God raised up, having loosed
the pains of death,
because it was not possible that He should be held by it. 25 For David says
concerning Him:
'I foresaw the Lord always before my face,
For He is at my right hand, that I may not be shaken.
26 Therefore my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad;
Moreover my flesh also will rest in hope.
27 For You will not leave my soul in Hades,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption.
28 You have made known to me the ways of life;
You will make me full of joy in Your presence.'*
29 "Men and brethren, let me speak freely to you of the patriarch David, that he
is both dead and buried, and his
tomb is with us to this day. 30 Therefore, being a prophet, and knowing that God
had sworn with an oath to him
that of the fruit of his body, *according to the flesh, He would raise up the
Christ to sit on his throne, 31 he,
foreseeing this, spoke concerning the resurrection of the Christ, that His soul
was not left in Hades, nor did His
flesh see corruption. 32 This Jesus God has raised up, of which we are all
witnesses. 33 Therefore being exalted
to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the
Holy Spirit, He poured out
this which you now see and hear.
34 "For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he says himself:
'The Lord said to my Lord,
"Sit at My right hand,
35 Till I make Your enemies Your footstool."'*
36 "Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this
Jesus, whom you crucified,
both Lord and Christ."
37 Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and
the rest of the apostles, "Men and
brethren, what shall we do?"
38 Then Peter said to them, "Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the
promise is to you and to your
children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call."
40 And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, "Be saved
from this perverse generation."
41 Then those who *gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about
three thousand souls were added
to them. 42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine and
fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and
in prayers.
As stated earlier, these people listening to Peter were from all over the known
world (Roman Empire), but were of
the Jewish religion and were in Jerusalem for the feast of Pentecost. The Jewish
religion had no concept of a Trinity.
These 3000 people could not have had any concept that Jesus was God himself, yet
3000 people were saved and
baptized that day! Amazing isn’t it!
According to Anthony Buzzard in his book 1The Doctrine of the Trinity –
Christianity’s Self-Inflicted Wound:
“Klaas Runia is typical of a contemporary school of thought which asserts that
the term Son of God leads
naturally to the developed orthodox dogma that Jesus is God the Son. What does
it mean, however, in the Bible
to be the Son of God?
Runia examines the title Son of God in his book on Christology and states
categorically that for
theologians to take the term ‘Son of God’ in its Old Testament meaning ‘runs
entirely contrary to what the
Gospels tell us.’ He maintains that the title ‘Son of God,’ as used in the New
Testament is a clear indication that
Jesus was preexistent Deity.
It is critically important not to lose sight of the Old Testament usage of the
term ‘Son of God.’ It would be
fatal to lift this title out of its biblical context and give it a meaning not
found in Scripture. Jesus habitually
appealed to the Old Testament to support his teaching.
It is amazing how the Jews were disingenuously trying to drum up charges against
Jesus. At one point they say
the following:
John 8:41, "You are doing the deeds of your father." They said to Him, "We were
not born of fornication; we have
one Father: God."
And then at another point they say Jesus was making himself equal with God
because He said that God was His Father:
John 5:18, "Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only
had broken the
sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God."
They were speaking out of both sides of their mouth – anything to try and trap
Him.
6. Other Considerations
Did the Jews believe Jesus was claiming to be God? They may have believed
(although incorrectly) that he was
Claiming to be equal with God because of some of the things he did and the way
he spoke, but thinking he was claiming
equality with God and thinking he was claiming to be God, are two different
things. Let’s see what they actually thought.
Mat 27:39-43, "And those passing by were hurling abuse at Him, wagging their
heads, and saying, "You who {are going to} destroy the temple and rebuild it in
three days, save yourself! if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.
In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were
mocking {Him} and saying, "He saved others; He cannot save Himself. He is the
King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in
Him. "HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE {Him} now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He
said, 'I am
the Son of God.' "
Jn 19:6-12: "So when the chief priests and the officers saw Him, they cried out
saying, "Crucify, crucify!"
Pilate *said to them, "Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no guilt
in Him. The Jews answered him, "We have a law, and by that law He ought to die
because He made Himself out {to} {be} the Son of God. Therefore when Pilate
heard this statement, he was {even} more afraid;
and he entered into the Praetorium again and *said to Jesus, "Where are You
from?" But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate *said to Him, "You do not speak
to me? Do You not know that I have authority to release You, and I have
authority to crucify You? Jesus answered, "You would have no authority over Me,
unless it had been given you from above; for this reason he who delivered Me to
you has {the} greater sin.As a result of this Pilate made efforts to release
Him, but the Jews cried out saying, "If you release this Man, you are no friend
of Caesar; everyone who makes himself out {to be} a king opposes Caesar."

In the Lord’s (or Model) prayer, who do we pray to? Some would
say God (which is correct), but if the Trinitarians
are correct, we are told by Jesus to pray to only one-third of a co-equal,
co-eternal being called God; the one-third we
are supposed to pray to is the FATHER!
Matt. 6:9, "Pray, then, in this way: 'Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be
Your name.
Are we supposed to leave the other two-thirds of the trinity out?
Another consideration is that the phrase “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (in that
form) is only found in one place in
the Bible. Let’s take a look at it:
Matt. 28:19, "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit,

There are many triune formulas in the Bible; one of the most popular is
“Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”. Since they
are mentioned together are we to assume they too were a trinity? There is no
trinity mentioned in Matthew 28:19, only the
three names (none of these are actually names) mentioned together.

Eusebius quotes it many, many times (at least 18) like this: “Go ye therefore
and make disciples of all nations IN
MY NAME”. He doesn’t use the triune formula here even though he was a
Trinitarian and lived during the height of the
Trinitarian/Unitarian controversy. Eusebius’s quotation makes more sense when
you see that the broader context of the
verse is all about Jesus. Notice the context and emphasis here and the
underlined and bolded words in the readings:
Mat 28:18-20, And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has
been given to Me in heaven and
on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
in the name of the Father and the
Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you;
and lo, I am with you always,
even to the end of the age."
OR
Mat 28:18-20, And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "All authority has
been given to Me in heaven and
on earth. 19 "Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
in MY name, 20 teaching them to
observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end
of the age."

Who was Eusebius? There were several men of this name. The one with whom we are
concerned is known as
Eusebius Pamphili, or Eusebius of Caesarea. He was born about 270 A.D. and died
about 340 A.D; he was a Trinitarian,
and later in life he assisted in the preparation of the Nicene Creed. He was
obviously a big fan of Constantine as is shown
from some of his writings about the Council of Nicea.

Here are some opinions of historians and others concerning him: "Eusebius, to
whose zeal we owe most of what is known of the history of the New Testament"
(Dr. Westcott, General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament,
page 108).
"Of the patristic witnesses to the text of the New Testament as it stood in the
Greek MSS, from about 300-340,
none is so important as Eusebius of Caesarea, for he lived in the greatest
Christian library of that age, that
namely which Origen and Pamphilus had collected. It is no exaggeration to say
that from this single collection of
manuscripts at Caesarea derives the larger part of the surviving ante-Nicene
literature. In his library, Eusebius
must have habitually handled codices of the Gospels older by two hundred years
than the earliest of the great
uncials that we have now in our libraries" (The Hibbert Journal, October.,
1902).

According to F.C. Conybeare,
"Eusebius cites this text (Matt 28:19) again and again in his works written
between 300 and 336, namely
in his long commentaries on the Psalms, on Isaiah, his Demonstratio Evangelica,
his Theophany ...in his
famous history of the Church, and in his panegyric of the emperor Constantine. I
have, after a moderate
search in these works of Eusebius, found eighteen citations of Matthew xxviii.
19, and always in the
following form: "
"Go ye and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to
observe all things, whatsoever I commanded you."
"In the course of my reading I have been able to substantiate these doubts of
the authenticity of the text Matthew
28:19 by adducing patristic evidence against it,so weighty that in the future
the most conservative of divines will
shrink from resting on it any dogmatic fabric at all, while the more enlightened
will discard it as completely as they
have its fellow-text of the three witnesses (F.C. Conybeare in Hibbert
Journal)."

Eusebius did cite the common version of Matthew that we have today, but only in
a few controversial works that were
written in his old age AFTER the council of Nicea. He never used it before 337
A.D. and he died in 340 A.D.
Now you may say “that is just an opinion – you can’t change scripture just
because of someone’s opinion”, and
you would be right (although apparently some of the scribes did just that); let
me just state here that I am not calling for
Matthew 28:19 to be re-written. We should never alter the text of scripture
without at least one MS to back us up;
all MSS that we have today either use the long version or are missing the end of
Matthew (even though we do not
have any MSS prior to the 4th century). However, if Matthew 28:19 is correct in
the long version (the way we have it
today), then evidently the Apostles didn’t get the command just right, because
every single instance of a baptism in the
whole Bible is a baptism into Jesus’ name!
Let’s look further:
Acts 2:38, Peter {said} to them, "Repent, and each of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ for the
forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Acts 8:16, For He had not yet fallen upon any of them; they had simply been
baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
Acts 10:48, And he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then
they asked him to stay on
for a few days.
Acts 19:5, When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord
Jesus.
Rom. 6:3, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus have been baptized into
His death?
1 Cor. 1:13, Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or
were you baptized in the
name of Paul? – This infers that they were baptized in the name of Jesus.
Gal. 3:27, For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves
with Christ.
Another consideration is that the short version makes more sense when compared
to the parallel passage in Luke:
Luke 24:46-47, and He said to them, "Thus it is written, that the Christ would
suffer and rise again from the dead
the third day, and that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed
in His name to all the
nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

There is also the fact that baptism is a picture of Christ’s death, burial, and
resurrection. Not the Father’s death
and not the Spirit’s death (they cannot die). As we always do, let’s see what
the scriptures say:
Rom 6:3-4, Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus have been baptized
into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into
death, so that as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in
newness of life.
Col. 2:12, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised
up with Him through faith in
the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

So baptism is clearly a picture of Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection.
Given all this information and the fact that
“Father” and “Holy Spirit” are not names, but titles, it seems probable that MSS
prior to the 4th century, could have
rendered Matthew 28:19 the way Eusebius quoted it in the 3rd and 4th centuries
and that we would not be in error by being
baptized in the name of Jesus, since that’s the way the Apostles did it.

7. Conclusion
Jesus was a man specially and divinely begotten by the Spirit-Power of God; a
man who’s Father was
God, but who recognized that of himself he could do nothing.

As J.S. Hyndman says in 5Lectures on The Principles of Unitarianism:
The fact is, that the Trinity owes its birth not to any clear passages of
Scripture, but to that wild spirit of
speculation, and that fondness for what is dark and overwhelming, which, not
content with simple truth,
must have something to amaze and confound the human intellect.

To quote Anthony Buzzard one last time from his book 1The Doctrine of the
Trinity – Christianity’s Self-
Inflicted Wound:
“Could it be that today’s Trinitarians inadvertently, and in sincerity desiring
to exalt Jesus, fall into the trap
of ascribing to the Messiah a position as God which he never claimed for
himself? A claim to be Deity in
the Trinitarian sense would actually be blasphemous by Jesus’ own standards,
since he repeatedly
affirmed that his Father was the only true God."

It can be very difficult to examine your own beliefs and break away from error
if you have embraced it. Let us
base our beliefs on scripture and if we find ourselves to be in error, have the
courage and resolve to admit it and
change.

As Hyndman says: "With regard to the major part of mankind, traditionary
prejudices and early associations have a
predominant influence, imparting a tincture to every object, and leaving traces
on every conclusion. The
mind may frequently rise above them, discard them, despise them, and leave them
at an infinite distance;
but it is still held by the fine and invisible threads of its antiquated
feelings and opinions, which, whenever
its vigour relaxes, pull it back into the limits from which it had burst away in
the plentitude of its power."

Perhaps this paper has made you think, made you reconsider your position, or
made you angry. Perhaps you
don’t have answers to the evidence I have listed here, but you are thinking of
some verses that you think may
support your position. In a separate paper, I have listed all of the verses
(that I know of) that others use to
support their positions (especially Trinitarians) and given explanations of
each. Because of the length of listing
and then explaining these verses, I had to make this a separate paper. You may
email me at truth4u@gmail.com
if you would like a copy.

Footnotes
1. This book by Sir Anthony Buzzard can be purchased either by logging on to
http://www.abccoggc.
org/coggc/books.htm or by calling 1-800-347-4261.
2. This quote is from the book, ‘The Use of the Fourth Gospel for Christology
Today’, by J.A. Baker
3. To read excerpts from this book or to purchase, log on to
http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47
4. This quote is from J.A.T. Robinson in his book, “Honest to God” pg. 65-66
5. To purchase, log on to http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47
6. To purchase, log on to http://www.biblicalunitarian.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47